Crystal clear melodies generate fleeting patterns across a digital canvas on Argentinian composer Vic Bang’s new one for Moon Glyph, Burung. It’s rare to hear songs so pristine and precise that nothing seems off or out of place, yet it’s all so warm and enchanting. Based on the sound palette alone, I’d expect the world of Burung to be a sterile, robotic place that finds its power in geometric architectures and patterned perfection. Bang turns this collection of sounds on its head, though, constructing playful, joyous worlds where every note comes alive.
“Uze” buries effervescent harmonies in a vat of translucent glass beads. Marbleized tones twist into a double helix, interconnected as though beams of light were physical threads. Soft percussive pads may provide some cushion for the free fall, but each rapidly-descending sequence still scatters into the drift like agar agar globules floating through water. There’s no drowning here, though, because we’ve learned to breathe underwater through the flickering hiss of “Minyatiri.”
Tiny melodies in the form of scattered water droplets dance through the rainbow prisms of “Gran Izo.” Beats crash the shore, holding out for one last sunrise before drifting away on synchronized aural clouds. “Yazzú” is a percussive feast. Bang concocts a witching hour full of collisions moving at irregular angles, creating a sharp staccato web to slice and dice luminous tonal sequences.
Stuttering rhythms tickle the stilted bass sequences to keep everything creeping along on “Ni Oro.” Mechanized birds chirp at the top of neon wire palms in this futuristic tropical beachscape. Burung is a series of these little worlds encased in bubbles. There’s something ephemeral about each beautifully composed vignette where the prospect of impermanence only heightens this music’s sentiment. At any second, Bang’s works could pop and scatter into nothingness, but the blissful allure of each graceful sonic passage is well worth the risk.
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